Convalescence
by drama-princess
Summary: The agonies, the mad midnight moments, must, in the course of nature, die away.


Convalescence  
by drama-princess  
  
A/N: I haven't written Moulin Rouge in ages-- but tonight I was struck to, and I am not one to argue. Hope I'm not too dreadfully out of practice. As always, all belongs to Baz.  
  
~-~  
  
_This is one of the things I'm afraid of. The agonies, the mad midnight moments, must, in the course of nature, die away. But what will follow? Just this apathy, this dead flatness? Will there come a time when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street, because I shall take the squalor as normal?_  
-A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis  
  
~-~  
  
I don't want it to ever stop hurting, he'd said to Toulouse. Implied was that recovery would cheapen it. His voice was very earnest. Toulouse. for his part, thought it terribly exciting. He would chart the progression of decay with his oil paints, call it A Series of Mourning. The Argentinean was somber, and cursed in three different languages at petty upsets.   
  
he said, flicking his cigarette away from him. No woman is worth that. Nini looked him in the face and laughed. He flinched. Her tone was like dishes breaking in the kitchen, a chill sharp clapping.   
  
He is like a child with a toy, the Doctor announced over absinthe. He laughed uneasily at the bartender. A broken toy, he said, and slumped over the wine glass.  
  
Satie said nothing.   
  
The romantics could not deny the sheer force of his grief. And he was very articulate, the critics said. His poetry had accumulated a ripe austerity of form. He had mastered the rhyme, and labored over the cadences. They gloated at Christian's sudden reduction to everyday genius. As the muse goes, an editor said over his coffee, so starts the work.   
  
The Duke read a poem once, grudgingly admired it, and withdrew his funding from the press.  
  
Then he slowly set the paper down, and considered Satine. Now, he reminded himself, she was not a brittle porcelain doll, but a prettyish red-headed poppet. Her rag-coloured limbs had gone askew at his command. But she dared die, she had taunted his full-blooded roses. Chosen scattered pieces of silk on stage. She had turned him into the villain of the piece. Her and the writer both.   
  
The Duke read The Faerie Queen that summer after. It had been written for another woman with the death-flush on her brow. There was a picture of Queen Elizabeth in the frontispiece, her flat stomach festooned with pearls. Her scarlet hair was strung with diamonds and roses. She was ugly, and that soothed him. Their corpses were both flesh in the ground. He wondered if it was bridal satin Elizabeth wore. He had meant to be the lover.   
  
Christian met an older woman, a grande matron in her thirties.  
  
Call me Isabel, she said, and she was dignified and gracious. Isabel ran a literary salon in Paris. In the afternoons, she became cheerfully, redeemably drunk. She banned absinthe from her flat.   
  
Isabel dyed her brown hair red and Christian told her she looked like a peacock. She laughed at his whimsy. That was what she deemed it. Christian, for his part, liked that her skin was ruddy. Blood pumped through her veins without second thought. Isabel was, if not indestructible, in a stasis of health.  
  
He also enjoyed her common theatricality. She wore bright satins and chiffon turbans, kept layers of fine black lace between him and her breasts. He told himself that he did not love her and Isabel agreed.   
  
You're such a poet, she said, happily sated as she reclined back onto her sheets. They smelled of cheap perfume, which was a certain Bohemian rather like scent like absinthe. Her body was heavy, and her white thighs crushed her satin robe as she shifted on the bed.  
  
he said. He rolled two cigarettes in front of the window. He was naked, enjoying the feel of warm light splaying across his front. He lit one cigarette but didn't give the other to Isabel.  
  
This too shall pass, she intoned. Her arms were held wide as if she was prophesying. He smiled as she took the cigarette from him.   
  
The Duke began courting a pliable young girl with reddish ringlets and a plump waist. Marie wore yellow organdie when he proposed out in the hothouse. The scent of the roses were intolerable so he spoke quickly. He avoided her green eyes and instead looked at the white Valencinnes lace edging the high collar, the delicate wrists, the dusty hem of her skirt. She studied the diamond, and turned her hand to watch the stone glitter. He sneezed and she didn't seem to mind.  
  
she said, and they drank lemonade on account of the hour.   
  
It was exactly five-hundred and sixty-two days after Satine's death when Christian and the Duke saw each other. Christian was going to a salon; the Duke to Collingwoods, to call for Marie's diamond brooch. Christian was thinking about the corona of the sun. Satine was a bright, edgy spirit in the corner of the planned poem. The Duke was taking exercise.   
  
They looked at each other in full awareness of what duty prodded them to do. Weep, bloody their fists, grab handfuls of stringy straw-coloured hair, spit on the matte black. The Christian and The Duke, and a thousand Bible metaphors curled at their heels. Christian thought almost absently of Isabel's satires. What a figure she would create of this man.  
  
The Duke, more frantically, remembered Marie. His little indiscretion must not come to light. She would not approve and it pleased him. He wanted that purity. Still, he would prefer to withhold all explanations until the honeymoon. At least.  
  
They looked at each other until the traffic broke, and then they walked away.


End file.
